uniCyCles
by Mr. Despair
Summary: 3 themes. [SasuxSaku, SasukeSon family] Sasuke's take as his son grows.


**Vague, run-on-y, and excessive use of pronouns. Naming Sasuke's son felt boring. I'm trying to show passion and feeling, so I'm not concerned about grammar or what-not. If you are, please follow the arrows and watch your step as you exit. :) The Cs are captilized because they are paralel, yet at a distance. Sasuke does this to himself, to people who understand or try to. And because Sasuke singles himself, it's UNIcycles. But because there are people who understand or try to, the more than one singled person, so thus the plural. Yes, nerdy Saki put a lot of thought into this. At least the title.  
**

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**uniCyCles**

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**I. celestial**

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For the first time in many, many years– the Uchiha Nursery sees stars.

It's a green twinkling, not red or a dark blue, and somehow he's surprised because it's commonly known that a darker color like his had a much higher chance than such a transparent green– especially since it was strong Uchiha blood– but then again _she_ is the mother and she doesn't give up on what's important (to her, because Sasuke didn't feel important otherwise). If she did, Sasuke wondered, what hell would he be drowning in?

They glitter and shine, those emeralds, because as quiet as the new generation of the Uchiha _is,_ he is happy and innocent and ultimately _not him._ Sasuke tells himself he should be happy, and he is, and then a heavy heart– a sort of haunting, inner voice, actually– says he wants to see red red red red, red like the moon and black like the night, and Sasuke frowns and closes the nursery door.

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**II. burn**

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His son is eleven now, with black black hair and green green eyes. He uses chakra sparingly, even with his large amount he inherited the important ability to control it. He has his father's nose and high aristocratic cheek bones, and his mother's chin. He's still quiet– but he smiles, and he laughs (slowly, because his voice is out of use from his silences, but still there) and glows 'cause he's _sunshine_, and _**god dammit**_ Sasuke can't stop smiling (internally) because this is how it's supposed to be, with children and flowers and grass and little rainbows peeking to beyond behind clouds.

His son opens the door– he had a mission, and Sasuke could proudly boast his eleven year old son was chuunin– and on his fifteenth mission, he comes home bloody and face distorted and releasing it once the door slams shut. He falls to the ground, holding his face– sobbing, and Sasuke stays still. Not because he is unsure of what to do– but it's because he doesn't know a better way, because when Sasuke was genin and killed for the first time, he'd had nightmares and cried and (even if he was impious toward religion) prayed prayed _**prayed**_ that he would stop seeing blood and that he wouldn't be like his fucking brother and that everything was all right and that his mother's hands were the cold wind running through his hair and his father was the still portrait that _stared stared __**stared**_ and his brother was away and _**not **__here_ and Sasuke was happy he wasn't because he couldn't cry in front of Itachi, because his damn brother never ever _**ever **_cried. Then he stabbed himself _over_ and _over_ and _over_ in the thigh to get used to blood but it wouldn't work and he couldn't move and oh _**god**_ he bled and bled but he couldn't _feel_ because he knew he didn't give a damn if he died anymore, because he _wanted_ to see his family again.

His son lifts his head up, and Sasuke is happy that he had Sakura's eyes instead of his own, because he hated mirrors and memories and all that fucked up shit– and Sasuke sees that there is a forehead protector over his eyes. Sasuke is alarmed. He asks his son, _Are you okay, what happened to your eyes, god dammit I'm going to speak to that stupid irresponsible sensei of yours– _

_No, Otou-san, __**no**_, His son weeps, syllables slurred and stuttered, _It's not S-s-s-sensei. It's m-muh-muh-my eyes– th-they're all weird an' scary an' t-t-tuh-tingly an' it's all r-re-re-red– but I can't s-ss-see n-n-nor-normally and I think I'm gettin' bl-bl-blind or somethin' an' then I could see so cl-cl-clearly an' when I threw my k-ku-kunai it was so __**smooth**__ but then he fell an' he bled and Otou-san he died, he died, he __**died**__ and I __**killed**__ him Otou-san, __**I **__killed him– _

And then his son resumes wailing.

Sasuke feels Sakura at his back– she's just come inside using the other door, and her groceries slip, and then they crash to the floor. Sakura doesn't care about the might-be broken eggs. She wants to go near her son, coo to him loving words, be cooling ice to the heat. But she knows she can't, not this time, because it's not her place. Sakura doesn't know, and she can't pretend to. She stares at Sasuke's back, because she knows he can understand what she means, because he himself knows what he must do, and then Sasuke nods and Sakura leaves the room and trusts.

But really, Sasuke's frozen– because, when _he_ had sharingan he _wanted_ power, he was _twelve_ and he _could_ handle it because it meant power but his son was _eleven_ and _wasn't_ twelve and he _wasn't_ power hungry and he _**wasn't**_ Sasuke.

Sasuke knows what to do– sort of, because it was only what he felt he could do– and so he kneels and eases the forehead protector off his son's eyes and momentarily to the floor. Sasuke needs him to get used to the vision, because he can't get anywhere if he doesn't face his fears and inside Sasuke weeps because he doesn't want to hurt this boy but he has to. Sasuke tells him, _Open your eyes._

_No_, His son continuously rubbed at his eyes.

_Do it_, Sasuke says, overpowering his son with little of his strength and he holds the fists down. _Do it._

His son opens his eyes, and then he screams and closes them, but Sasuke pulls a little on his arms and his sons eyes open.

_Now close._

He does this immediately, and Sasuke instructs further, but in a voice oddly soft, _Move that chakra from your eyes to your center, and envision color.__ Concentrate._

Sasuke waited a moment.

_Now open again._

When his son's eyes are (thank _**god**_) green and _not_ red and cold with tears, Sasuke pulls him into an embrace.

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**III. cookies**

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His son arrives home again one day from training. He had applied for the good of Konoha to be a jounin at twelve, a prodigy, and leering around the corner is thirteen. Thirteen is an unlucky number, his (dead) aunt once told him. He was six then, berry tongue swirling on an orange– he loves oranges– popsicle on the porch that lain under the threshold. His legs swung back and forth like a metronome– _tick-tock, tick-tock_– and after setting down a fresh a tray of ("Chocolate chip, right Obaa-san?" He said and _tick-tock, tick-tock_) cookies within home, ("Okaa-san, chocolate chip?" His mother smiles, "Yes, it's your favorite, right? Like your father's.") terrycloth turned raw and red his aunt's plump fingers after vigorous scrubbing.

He never believed in that statement– his rotund aunt was notorious for her adoration for the supernatural (he repeated something she had told him to his mother and she laughed like _bells bells bells_ and why _Mikoto_ instead of Suzu?)– until he remembered what he did at age thirteen. What happened.

And on cue, his attention is curved to the black on his neck.

Later the day, Sakura holds him tight and Sasuke grasps her just as tautly. Sakura doesn't ask what's wrong when he comes to her with _that look_ because she knows it's not her place. She knows that it's important to Sasuke, and something she can't understand. (But she'll try to, whenever Sasuke decides to just accept comfort) He mumbles things about 'thirteen' into the junction of neck to shoulder. (smelling like chocolate chip cookies) And like his mother did once when he scraped his knee, (it hurt so _badly_) Sakura rubs his back in circular motions, and somewhere along the line humming a short-sweet tune, loving and patient like years ago.

He hopes that aspect of thirteen is what his son experiences most.

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End file.
